This research attempted to test whether the granting of points for receiving the most votes as the "best post" would affect the quality of subsequent postings to online discussions. Five online discussions were held in a small graduate-level course in leadership theory, and postings were coded into Bloom's taxonomy. Quality was defined as the percent of postings in the upper three levels (Analyze, Evaluate, and Create), but did not change. By asking students their reasons for choosing a posting as best, content analysis resulted in five reasons: "personal," "new," "stimulating," "informative," and "like me," which are compared to the instructor's views. When asked if the availability of points affected their performance, nine students felt the points did not affect their postings and two students tried harder because of them. While these results do not capture a link between receiving rewards and improved quality in online discussions, this exercise may capture the process whereby compliments for good postings may set the standard for how graduate students think and contribute online.

Facilitating Online is a course intended for training educators as online facilitators of fully online and mixed mode courses. The Centre for Educational Technology (CET) produced a Course Leader's Guide as an Open Educational Resource to assist educators and trainers who wish to implement a course on online facilitation within their institution or across several institutions. The guide contains the course model, week-by-week learning activities, general guidance to the course leader on how to implement and customise the course and specific guidelines on each learning activity.

"As the accessibility of a conversation increases, so too does the spectrum of opinion brought to that conversation, until the opinions range along such a wide spectrum that the conversation simply cannot move forward. It will continue to grow, but like a tumor it is useless and for all purposes dead. It will not better anyone involved in it. The conversation has collapsed from the width of the spectrum of opinion."

There are many ways government officials and community leaders can engage the public around the myriad issues that affect people's lives. It is our stance that quality public engagement must take into consideration seven core principles if it is to effectively build mutual understanding, meaningfully affect policy development, and inspire collaborative action among citizens and institutions.

The following seven principles overlap and reinforce each other in practice. They serve both as ideals to pursue and as criteria for judging quality. Rather than promoting partisan agendas, the implementation of these principles generates authentic engagement in public problem-solving.

The Seven Core Principles

Preparation - Consciously plan, design, convene and arrange the engagement to serve its purpose and people.

In most online conversations I've been involved with, you eventually come to a point where the people interested in an evolving, exploratory dialogue, in learning something new about themselves and others, in thinking aloud, in working through things, find themselves worn out by a kind of rhetorical infection inflicted by bad faith participants who are just there to affirm what they already know and attack everything that doesn't conform to that knowledge. (Or by the classic "energy creatures" whose only objective is to satisfy their narcissism.) I used to think that was a function of the size of the room, that in a bigger discursive space, richer possibilities would present themselves. Now I don't know. Maybe it's a product of the form itself, maybe it's a sign of our times, and maybe it's my own unfair expectations or my own character that's the problem.